I’m sick to death of that busybody Mary Louise Berker. You would think because she’s managed to birth four sons, and is once again fat as a cow with yet another child, she knows all there is to know about conception and child-rearing. This is hardly the case. Her sons run around like wild Indians, and think nothing of putting their grubby little hands on the furniture in her parlor. And she just laughs and saysboys will be boyswhen they and their scruffy dogs—three of them!—come romping in.
She had the nerve to suggest I might see her doctor, and somevoodoowoman. She swears she’ll have the girl she pines for this time because she went to this hideous person and bought a charm to hang over her bed.
It’s bad enough she dotes on those ruffians in a most unseemly way, and often in public, but it’s beyond belief that she would speak to me about such matters, all under the guise of friendship and concern.
I could not take my leave soon enough.
Roz decided she’d have liked Mary Louise. And wondered if the Bobby Lee Berker she’d gone to high school with was a descendant.
Then she saw it, and her heart took a hard jump into her throat.
I have locked myself in my room. I will speak to no one. The humiliation I have been dealt is beyond bearing. For all these years I have been a dutiful wife, an exceptional hostess, I have overseen the staff of this house without complaint, and worked tirelessly to present the proper image for our societal equals and Reginald’s business associates.
I have, as wives must, overlooked his private affairs, satisfied that he was always discreet.
Now this.
He arrived home this evening and requested that I come to the library so he could speak to me privately. He told me he had impregnated one of his mistresses. This is not a conversation that should take place between husband and wife, and when this was my response, he brushed it aside as if it was no matter.
As if I am no matter.
I am told that I will be required to create the illusion that I am expecting. I am told that if this creature delivers a son, it will be brought into our home, it will be given the Harper name and raised here. As his son. As my son.
If it is a girl, it will be of no matter. I will have another “miscarriage” and that will be that.
I refused. Of course I refused. To take a whore’s child into my home.
